It’s almost impossible not to perceive that the development of Obsidian has slowed down compared to the earlier feverish releases of ‘regular’ Obsidian, Obsidian Beta and now Mobile. In particular, using iPadOS Mobile is painful. And unfortunately for me that’s my preferred means of usage. Submitting Bug Reports is torturous. Submissions go unanswered in the Forum, except by helpful users for the most part. And now they go to the Graveyard 24 hours after the last response which in many cases IS the initial submission. Even the most elemental of iPadOS features go unaddressed, think Copy & Paste, Drag & Drop, Copy and Paste. And the use of Panes is Painful (at best, think Backlink Panel/Pane).
And finally, to the Moderator who wants to classify this as a rant, IT’S not. It’s simply a request for a little more transparency in the process, e.g., the Trello Roadmap (for Mobile). Even if it was a small blurb explaining that their full attention is focused on all things Sync. That I can suggest would be how shall I say…Helpful….without divulging State Secrets.
I will indeed be moving this to #meta since it’s not really a feature or bug report for mobile. I want to point out that changes to the release cycle are a different thing than development slowing down. The last few releases have indeed been spread a bit further, so it might make sense to adjust your expectations accordingly. The release cycle depends on many things! Not all features are short, quick and easy to implement, and it might take some additional time now that the devs have their plate more full, especially now when those requests involve one or more of the Obsidian services (Desktop, Sync, Publish and Mobile - which is quite the handful). Also note that all of those come with their own numbers of feature and bug reports, so not replying or implementing those you have opened doesn’t mean that no work is being done.
The Trello roadmap is meant to give you a broad overview of what’s in the works, and it’s designed to be very high level, so our devs can avoid investing time on managing features there. As you may notice, there is quite a bit of development work going on, and the devs time is better spent there than on Trello. It’s just not humanly possible to respond to every single forum thread, nor to tackle them all at once as you may imagine. That is indeed where our community shines, and I’m glad other users have been helpful!
Regarding the issues you are facing, you could help us out a lot more if you open a proper bug report to describe what you mean exactly by painful. I understand that submitting bug reports can be annoying, but that comes with the territory of using a beta app. I can only recommend patience or waiting until the app is more stable if that’s not acceptable to you.
THANK YOU! That is EXACTLY the type of reply I was hoping for - Capitals are not yelling on my part, just emphasis .
Absolutely! I get that. And I fully agree and understand. I took my part of the initial VIP participation in the Mobile Beta process as my participation towards helping the Devs find and react to ‘issues’. My problem was that it seemed nearly impossible for me to track when/if a solution found itself into a subsequent release. I kept track of my submissions and several releases came out without ‘correcting’ the issues. That became a little frustrating when releases were coming out weekly, if not sooner.
Not to be too argumentative, but I’m very aware of beta testing apps thru TestFlight. Been doing it for years in the Apple ecosystem with some of the ‘largest’ apps in the store. Normally, I also include a screen grab of every submission using Annotable to highlight and point out exactly the issue. Honestly, I don’t expect a reply from the Devs although I have found the comment ……”item has been fixed in v0.0.XX” means it’s now off my radar.
Anyway, I really appreciate you taking the time to reply and explain!
Just to help with expectations: even if releases keep coming out weekly, it might be very difficult to get your features/bugs solved that fast.
Keep in mind Obsidian is not a large app (2 devs only!) and it’s also not iOS exclusive, another dimension I didn’t mention was multiple operating systems: android + iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux. On TestFlight it might be convenient to report some bugs, but 2 devs won’t be able to handle the amount of reports we as users generate. This is why we use the forum, so mods (who are also volunteering their time) can try to help out by collect those bugs which appear frequently, have high severity or those features that have the most support (which is also a reason we might not have gotten to your reports just yet).
Another thing to consider, is that less releases will naturally happen as an application reaches a certain point of maturity. This happens to most ‘good’ software. My guess (although I have no actual idea what the devs are focused on), is that the devs are currently spending a lot of time on Sync and Publish, since those are what will actually make Obsidian sustainable as a business for them. Once those are rock solid, I think UX features/usability will probably come back to the forefront, and also resolving the upgrade to CodeMirror 6 to simplify the cross platform maintenance/development.
Development hasn’t stopped. The devs have had a very busy month personally and, sure, releases have slowed as a result. I’m sure they feel guilty about not keeping up with their usual cadence.
I am gonna close this thread because I do not see the constructive point of it, other than generating frustration and anxiety in all parties. @Daveb08 if you are unhappy with software or you are unhappy with the pace of development, we are sorry. If you reached a point where this affects your emotional wellbeing, we are sorry. If Obsidian is the cause of all this negative emotions, I encourage you to use something else that better suits your needs, even if we are sad to see you go.
If I must guess, obsidian is relatively complicated software with a lot of features. And the upcoming features listed on the trello seem to be challenging to implement. Like the often-requested WYSIWYG editor.
